Armies

[Thalassicus]

@TheQuad
Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency... when I put information in so many places sometimes I make mistakes. Follow the instructions in the first post of this thread. I'll update the readme for the next version.


@BomberEscort
I agree with the 3 things on your preferences list. The Caravel sight promotion should disappear when upgraded with the latest versions of Combat. All non-unique unit "attributes" are set to not upgrade (with the sole exception of the Scout terrain bonus, since a developer specifically stated that one is intended).

Interesting idea about restricting land bombardment. My first impression is I'd like the change, I'm going to think about the possible ramifications for a few days.

Regarding tanks... I agree move after attack is powerful, but is it really worth the tradeoff? Compare unmodded tanks to mech infantry:

• Can move after attacking
• Can not be upgraded to from earlier units
  
• Requires oil
• 105%
• 80% defending on rough terrain
• 60% vs cities
• 50% visibility range
• Countered by Anti-Tank
• Countered by Helicopter

Once you reach level 4 (blitz unlock) the comparison is even worse, as blitz supersedes move-after-attack. In vanilla I got better use out of building bombers instead of tanks. By that point in the game I've got level 8+ infantry in my army, so upgrade them to a half dozen mech infantry, and roll over someone with mechs+aircraft.


@Tomice
Did you clear your cache? The latest version actually changes all defenses to simply be 2x their vanilla values (10 15 25) since I added the Agra Fort (10).

 

[Perkus]

Has anyone ever tried starting a game in the modern era using advanced settings in order to really test out the capabilities & nuances of the modern combat units? From what I can see that would be the best way to get some sort of feel for them.

The idea of eliminating land->sea bombardment is indeed interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it either.

I'm currently playing around with modding the combat odds to work for air units and perhaps also city bombardment. Turning the interface on for air units is trivial, however none of it shows anything useful, as none of the function calls are coded to handle air units. I'm going to try and plug in my own versions that estimate the results of air strikes. At the very least I will show the impact of the ground/naval penalties and heli bonus those units gets, so it's easier to remember them.

Reminder: I looked for & didn't see the amphibious heli change we agreed upon in either Combat v15 or Patch v28.

 

[jacyp]

I'm running Units v.13, and just tried an attack across a river, and it's decreasing my strength and showing the -20% modifier, so it seems to me to still be working. If you're sure, can you give a screenshot, specific unit types, or a save? I was worried that my code fix for certain combat modifiers is somehow suppressing the river penalty.

Hey, I was doing some major testing before posting about it again.

Here some screen shots:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Good news is that the penalty is applying correctly.

What took me so long to take these is the fact that in the beggining of the game the penalty is shown normaly, so I had gave up taking screen shots of it. But, for my surprise, after some time in the game the problem appeared.

Notice by the 3 last screen shots that the penalty is auto-canceling the bonus for the terrain. Both don't show. I don't think that's intentional, I remember cases of both showing. But I don't know anymore if it's a problem with the mod or with the game. I'll try playing without any mods to see if this problem appear. If it does, I'll post in the report bugs section.

Cheers.

 

[Perkus]

@jacyp
Very curious. Thanks for the helpful screenshots. Looks like it happens for both cities and units (they use two different functions). I'll try to figure out what's going on. Hopefully I can reproduce it. If you have a save where this is obvious that would help, too.

EDIT: Made a mistake thinking one of those screenshots was unit vs. unit. In fact they're all city attacks. Which makes sense because there is no code there at all for checking rivers on city attacks! I'll have a fix up soon. There may be some other rare cases where it's not showing the modifiers, especially in city attacks. But rest assured it doesn't change the actual combat resolution math, since that is done separately and totally unmoddable. The main combat odds function is around 800 lines long, it's a real pain to try to find what may be missing!

 

[civcivv]

Thal:

As of v14 the promotion swap still isn't working - unless I need to empty my cache first. Don't think that would be the case though as the mod's name changed?

Just to confirm I'm only using modinfo, promotion swap table and the lua file, nothing else. I edited the modinfo to exclude the other files I'm not wanting to use and removed them from the folder.

 

[jacyp]

@jacyp
Very curious. Thanks for the helpful screenshots. Looks like it happens for both cities and units (they use two different functions). I'll try to figure out what's going on. Hopefully I can reproduce it. If you have a save where this is obvious that would help, too.

EDIT: Made a mistake thinking one of those screenshots was unit vs. unit. In fact they're all city attacks. Which makes sense because there is no code there at all for checking rivers on city attacks! I'll have a fix up soon. There may be some other rare cases where it's not showing the modifiers, especially in city attacks. But rest assured it doesn't change the actual combat resolution math, since that is done separately and totally unmoddable. The main combat odds function is around 800 lines long, it's a real pain to try to find what may be missing!

I've noticed that it doesn't modifies the math, it's only not showing.

What intrigues me is why equivalent modifiers doesn't show up either. For instance, in the second screen shot the correct is to show the crossing rivers modifier (-20%) and the rough terrain combat promotion modifier (+20%), but it doesn't show any of them, they cancel each other in math and on screen. Weird.

Thal:

As of v14 the promotion swap still isn't working - unless I need to empty my cache first. Don't think that would be the case though as the mod's name changed?

Just to confirm I'm only using modinfo, promotion swap table and the lua file, nothing else. I edited the modinfo to exclude the other files I'm not wanting to use and removed them from the folder.

It worked perfectly in my games with the new version.

 

[Perkus]

@jacyp:
Hmm, in that second screen short it should definitely be showing the +20% vs Rough Terrain for the attacking Swordsman. This is what I fixed in the first place. Do you know what version Unofficial Patch you had enabled when this was taken? The combat odds fixes are actually in the file EnemyUnitPanel.lua, which is not in the "Balance - Combat" mod, it was in the patch mod. But it was removed in Unofficial Patch v.28. It's supposed to be in Attila's mods, but wasn't there yet as of version 6. It seems to me you didn't have the fixes at all.

 

[clearbeard]

Regarding Submarines and Destroyers:

You could...

• Remove PROMOTION_SEE_INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE from Destroyers altogether, leaving only Subs that can see Subs.
• Have PROMOTION_SEE_INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE available at Radar
• Change the Caravel sight promotion (PROMOTION_EXTRA_SIGHT_II) to be lost with upgrade (no other unit uses this promotion).
• Add PROMOTION_EXTRA_SIGHT_II to the Submarine while removing it from the Caravel.
• Downgrade Destroyers from PROMOTION_EXTRA_SIGHT_III (III is used by Destroyers only) to II and give the Subs III

... or maybe some or all of the above.

My preference would be:

• Downgrade Destroyers from PROMOTION_EXTRA_SIGHT_III to II and give the Subs III
• Change the Caravel sight promotion (PROMOTION_EXTRA_SIGHT_II) to be lost with upgrade (no other unit uses this promotion).
• Have PROMOTION_SEE_INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE available at Radar
  (add <TechPrereq>TECH_RADAR</TechPrereq> to PROMOTION_SEE_INVISIBLE_SUBMARINE). This would also change it for Subs that are discovered at Refrigeration. Maybe it could be moved to Refrigeration (seems odd though, but would ensure that subs always had the promotion, unless radar is always before refrigeration)

Destroyers need to keep their sub-spotting ability. It's annoying that they're the only ships the AI builds, making player use of subs less viable. But the AI can't keep ships alive long in a real war anyway, so that's not a huge issue for me at the moment.

As much as I love destroyers that can see entire oceans, ALL ship-type sight promotions (as opposed to +1 sight purchased with XP) should be lost on upgrade, along with the other non-UU unit abilities. I think caravels and ships-of-the-line are the only ones that give extra sight that stacks when upgraded to destroyers, and perhaps the SotL should keep theirs as a UU ability.

I like having "see invisible submarines" only available with the RADAR tech. It could be handled like embark, so ships have to return to friendly territory to get the upgrade.

It would be nice if the destroyer sight bonus didn't reveal subs, but I'm not sure that's possible with our tools. Would it be possible to remove "see invisible subs" as an inherent ability, but add it back as a different promotion with a discrete range of 2, for instance? The idea would be for destroyers to have RADAR of range 5, but SONAR only of range 2, making subs viable to sneak up closer and attack or slip through the cracks, but still be detected by a vigilant sweep. Subs could potentially retain a longer range detection of other subs.

Another idea I had to encourage naval warfare is to give all land units capable of bombarding the 'RangeAttackOnlyInDomain=true' setting. That way, dealing with enemy naval requires a Navy or Air Force (and the occasional City Bombardment)...

Thoughts?

An interesting idea from a strategic point of view. But one thing I hated about Civ 4 was that land based artillery couldn't engage ships, so I personally wouldn't like taking that ability away. Giving that setting to archers, crossbowmen, and a hypothetical ranged anti-tank or helicopter gunship would be a good thing though, IMO.

 

[clearbeard]

@jacyp:
Hmm, in that second screen short it should definitely be showing the +20% vs Rough Terrain for the attacking Swordsman. This is what I fixed in the first place. Do you know what version Unofficial Patch you had enabled when this was taken? The combat odds fixes are actually in the file EnemyUnitPanel.lua, which is not in the "Balance - Combat" mod, it was in the patch mod. But it was removed in Unofficial Patch v.28. It's supposed to be in Attila's mods, but wasn't there yet as of version 6. It seems to me you didn't have the fixes at all.

Pretty sure this is a display issue with vanilla, and not an actual combat odds issue. When attacking cities, many combat odds modifiers evidently don't show up in the list, but are used in the odds calculation as displayed, and in the actual combat resolution. Or at least I remember reading a similar discussion in the bugs forum.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Perkus
The helicopter change is in UP v28, I forgot to document it. Documentation is starting to take a lot of time, 5-6 hours each of the past few weeks... I've been thinking of ways to reduce the workload somewhat. I might include version history solely in the readmes (full history for that specific mod) and on the update site (recent changes across all mods), which would make updating the threads easier, and reduce consistency errors.

@civcivv
You also need ingame.xml or the lua file won't load.

 

[civcivv]

Ahhh I didn't know the InGame mod was needed as well. Sorry!

 

[truetom]

I like most things in this mod, but would like to remove 2 units per tile. Is this possible in a simple way (I'm no programmer)? Would it affect savegames? Thanks.

 

[Thalassicus]

This mod does not give the capability to stack military units 2 per tile... do you have any other mods installed?

 

[Perkus]

@Perkus
The helicopter change is in UP v28, I forgot to document it.

Hmm, are you sure? Maybe I'm being dense, but I checked the code again and I don't see it in either sql or xml. There is one chopper change there but that gives them FLAT_MOVEMENT_COST, not amphibious.

 

[alpaca]

Hey Thal, I had a look at your lua code to swap around melee and ranged promotions. I think overwriting the type function is not a good idea (even locally) but also have a question: You are looping through all units, every turn, which seems to me quite slow. Is there no unit upgraded event that you could check as this is the actual time where the problem appears?

 

[Tomice]

@Tomice
Did you clear your cache? The latest version actually changes all defenses to simply be 2x their vanilla values (10 15 25) since I added the Agra Fort (10).

I cleared my cache, but walls are still 20 and castles 40 str.

What surprises me more is that even in a new game I have the higher values!

 

[truetom]

This mod does not give the capability to stack military units 2 per tile... do you have any other mods installed?

Yes, but it must have been a bug anyways. After restarting the game it disapeared. I admire how you made promotions. Keep it comming.

 

[Zeppelin4]

I cleared my cache, but walls are still 20 and castles 40 str.

What surprises me more is that even in a new game I have the higher values!

Can you by chance post how to clear your cache?

 

[Txurce]

How do the improved city defenses provided by these mods differ, overlap, or contradict Affores' ACD? I am now playing with Thal's, knows he values Afforess', and wondered if there is an upside to combining them?

I have the same question regarding the Combat Balance mod and the AI Battle Tweaks mod.

 

[Perkus]

@Thalassicus:
I searched the readme for documentation regarding the Demolish change (at first I thought the tooltip might be outdated, but the xml matches). It looks like this substantial change is currently undocumented. Sorry to be pointing out more work for ya, I know you're getting swamped already.

I *was* having a significant issue with siege unit promotions. I just loaded up an older game with Balance - Combat v.15. I have a level 4 Rocket Artillery, whose promotions include Siege (+40% vs. Cities) and Demolish (+100% vs Cities, +50% vs Fortified). The problem is that when I'm getting the combat odds while pointing at an enemy city, it shows me +75% Bonus vs. Cities. The displayed unit strength matches the listed bonuses, so it's not just a display issue. I was puzzled for a while, but my conclusion was that there is a +75% cap on the anti-city bonus, and perhaps on any individual bonus.

EDIT: Ok, it's not quite that simple. I just noticed that in the same save I also have a different Rocket Artillery, level 1, with only the free Demolish promotion. It's only getting a +50% vs city. This doesn't fit my cap theory at all. I now think there's something going on with this being a 2-3 week old save that was created with Balance - Units as opposed to Balance - Combat. Maybe the name change has somehow screwed up the loading of old promotions? Very curious if this is working normally for others now...

EDIT #2: Looks like the bonuses of all the units with Demolish in my old saved games are messed up in different & bizarre ways. I'll chalk it up to a lack of backwards compatibility for now, but keep an eye on it in new games.

EDIT #3: I confirmed that both Demolition and Siege works properly on newly built Artillery even in the old save. So please disregard the above. Although I don't really understand why it gets messed up in the first place.